Report: Green New Deal Could Cost Every US Household $65,000 A Year

The Green New Deal could cost up to $93 trillion over a decade, according to a new report by the right-leaning American Action Forum (AAF).

That comes to an estimated cost of $36,100 to $65,300 per American household per year to meet the Green New Deal’s goals, AAF reported Monday. Those goals include “net-zero” emissions, widespread high-speed rail, guaranteed jobs, universal health care and upgrading every building.

Thus, the potential cost of the Green New Deal could range from 63 percent of the median to nearly 106 percent of what the average household earns a year. The median U.S. household income was $61,372 in 2017, according to government figures.

AAF looked at what it would cost to achieve the Green New Deal’s main goals. For example, eliminating emissions from the electric grid is estimated to cost $5.4 trillion over 10 years. Also, “greening” the U.S. transportation system could cost up to $2.7 trillion, including building out high-speed rail.

Universal health care, on the other hand, would add an estimated $36 trillion in costs to the Green New Deal over a decade — this was included in the proposal despite having nothing to do with the environment.

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez walks away from the front of the White House with her deputy communication director Anika Legrand-Wittich (L) in Washington, U.S., Feb. 12, 2019. REUTERS/Jim Bourg

“The Green New Deal is clearly very expensive,” wrote AAF policy analysts, including economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office director and adviser to former Arizona Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. Holtz-Eakin is now AAF’s president.

New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Markey to introduce Green New Deal resolutions in early February, calling for overhauling the U.S. economy to get greenhouse gas emissions to “net-zero” within 10 years.

Republicans oppose the Green New Deal, seeing it as a massive expansion of government to control almost every aspect of American life.

“The American Action Forum’s analysis shows that the Green New Deal would bankrupt the nation,” Wyoming GOP Sen. John Barrasso said in a statement.

“Promising new technologies like advanced nuclear power, carbon capture, and carbon utilization hold the key to significant emissions reductions,” said Barrasso, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

We will be ceding TOTAL economic power and authority of our lives to the “green” Communists. There will be no such thing as “disposable” income or an “Amazon”. Your complete incomes will flow to the State politbureau.

I haven’t decided whether AOC is the most brilliant politician to come along in a long time or whether she’s a complete idiot. She asks for the world but will take what she can incrementally get or she asks for the world expecting it’s all possible by believing in magic?

Unfortunately $65,000 a year household isn’t a very compelling argument when the federal government spent an average of $32,400 per household last year on who knows what. We are so inured to massive budget deficits that no one cares anymore. It’s just normal. So what if the government spends an additional 200% a year for the GND? Just print more money or whatever the government does. Impending global financial apocalypse? Nah, bro. that’s crazy talk.

I think the whole idea is to create a global financial collapse with 1000000% inflation. That way, all the debt incurred to pay for this insanity would be wiped out by inflation. Only the creditors are harmed, unfortunately, the largest holder of US debt is the Social Security trust fund.

It’s not about the money. Never was. That’s why they don’t care. It’s about control. Of you. Once the state assumes the authority to manage you on the basis of carbon emissions, there will be absolutely no aspect of your life that will be free from potential government interference or total control.

“Promising new technologies like advanced nuclear power, carbon capture, and carbon utilization hold the key to significant emissions reductions,” said Barrasso, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.”

Well, the good Senator got 2 of those 3 correct. Unless by carbon capture he means growing more forests to be left largely uncut. Photosynthesis is the best carbon capture. For the oceans it’s the carbonate skeletons of phytoplankton (which are powered by photosynthesis) sinking to the bottom to be buried.

And I’m about head out to gym in my p/u truck and utilize some stored carbon to get there and back. Greening the planet. CO2 is our friend. People who talk about CO2 as pollution are just dim-wittted sots IMO.

I have noted in the few years I’ve been following climate change the ‘climate sensitive’ (friends, family and occasional acquaintances) repeat the meme that ‘atmospheric carbon’ (if they even include the atmospheric bit, which they rarely do) is going to destroy the planet. But if you simply ask how that works they say ” because everyone knows it does” or something equally stupid.

Tragically, when I point out some facts to them they look at me as if I’M mad!

Dim witted sots is far too mild a term for delusion that would kill every living thing.

We need to WIN this already, or the worst fears of the alarmists will be realized–because of their devastating cures.

I think the only way to win it is to become aware of the areas where greens are CORRECT and encourage that.

Organic and regenerative agriculture can be done by the free market (currently the US government subsidizes candy production and that is a major reason organics are expensive). Unlike solar, wind, high-speed rail and the other blathers, those things do work, some of them spectacularly well.

So are these unemployed and unwilling to work going to able to build high speed trains, solar and wind farms and rebuild all buildings in the US? No they won’t so whatever the cost, triple that because of inefficiency.

Well this is a bit controversial. Firstly, I am absolutely adamant that Universal Healthcare will not cost an EXTRA 36 trillion, so you can subtract a very significant sum from private healthcare payments currently being made by Americans. Large numbers of people will save money on healthcare, others will top up privately as currently. The mass purchasing power of the USG will reduces drug and equipment bills radically. If necessary they will set up state owned manufacturing to produce generic drugs as a non-profit. Generics profiteering is the worst stain on the pharma industry globally.

I would be extremely confident that basic universal healthcare will not cost any more than the current private system excluding 60 million people. So you can strike that $36trn straight away. It may cost more in taxes, but huge savings in HMO plans will more than offset that.

The other really big cost in there is guaranteed jobs. Here the range is so wide that one wonders what assumptions have been made. How many jobs at what salary?

All the others are pissing in the wind in comparison, so all debate initially should focus on healthcare and guaranteed jobs.

Remember: huge vested interests want to maintain the status quo. They will fight dirty, they will lie and then quietly own up like Google did over spying.

When blanket numbers are produced without detailed breakdown of assumptions, I assume until proven otherwise thst they are incorrect.

Not that they are lying, but they have chosen assumptions which are not the most appropriate.

When blanket numbers are produced without detailed breakdown of assumptions, I assume until proven otherwise thst they are incorrect

Whenever estimates are given for how much a government program is going to cost, you are correct to assume the number is incorrect, however you are incorrect as to the direction – Government programs invariably cost *MORE* than they are estimated to, never less.

So you think by having 50% of the population pay for 100% covered healthcare for the other 50% of the population – drastically increasing demand on healthcare services – is going to reduce bills dramatically? That is just crazy talk – pure BS. Perhaps we should just make doctors work as slaves and we can enslave people at birth to be trained as doctors so that we have enough of them.

Set up state owned manufacturing to produce drugs at a non profit? So you think the government should violate patents on pharmaceuticals so they can manufacture and sell them at no profit, taking away the ability for pharmaceutical companies to R&D new drugs?

There won’t be a place for private healthcare when the ‘Green New Deal’ comes to frution. So, it’s gonna be the ‘State Way’ or the ‘Highway to Misery and an early death’. Think of Castro. Excellent care for party apparatchiks and supporters, and some decent doctors amongst the loyal masses? Not so much for political opponents, homosexuals, and people who didnt think’ the right way. He ran his own private island for the best part of 50 years and still couldn’t make socialism work!

It doesn’t matter how adamant you are. The numbers don’t lie.
The idea that having government pay for something is going to reduce the cost of that something runs counter to hundreds of years of experience with government.
It also runs counter to the experience of countries that have actually turned over health care to the government.
What always happens is quality goes down and costs go up.

Ah yes, the old evil “vested interests” who are keeping the pure of heart from creating heaven on earth.
Sheesh, you guys will fall for anything.

As with most claims that it’s just greedy free market profiteers that are causing problems, the reality is far more complex, and like always, the reason is actually the out of control bureaucracy. Other causes are our out of control lawsuit rewards, higher number of medical tests, and a more diverse population with other social factors leading to poorer health. The final reason is that the US leads the world – by far – in medical R&D.

Since my previous comment got sent to the bit bucket, I’ll explain it again.

1) Anyone who thinks the US has a free market health care system knows nothing about the US or free markets.

2) By comparing infant mortality and life expectancy, you have proven that you know nothing about health care systems in any country. Those two statistics are famous for their use by those who know nothing but want to sound intelligent.
2a) First, learn a little statistics. Before you can compare two populations, you have to first make sure that the two populations are comparable.
2b) For infant mortality: What’s the average age of first birth between the two populations? What percentage of the pregnant population takes advantage of health care services that are already available?
2c) For life expectancy, how does general health compare between populations, also are there any sub-populations known for being risk takers or especially violent.
3) Another issue is how are the statistics defined and counted. For example, Germany counts any baby that dies within 24 hours of birth as a still birth. In the US it’s an infant mortality. In France, any baby that is born under a certain weight and subsequently dies, is considered a still-birth. In the US it’s an infant mortality.

Once you correct for the many, many differences between countries and how the numbers are gathered and counted, you find that the US is right up there at the top.

As you admit, a big factor in health care costs is nutrition. Unless you go full blown totalitarian, which most socialists would applaud, there is nothing the government can do to impact that.

Drugs cost more in the US because we have to pay for the developing of those drugs. The rest of the world free-loads on US R&D.

Regardless, I love the way people take subsidized prices and proclaim that this means other countries are cheaper.

Infant mortality statistics are completely misleading as you say. Some nations require an infant to be 48 hours old before they call it infant death, some require evidence that the lungs and heart were healthy, some require it to be over a certain weight, and some just don’t keep reliable data on it.

Let me guess. You are so impressed with the efficiency of the one U.S. government run healthcare system, the Veterans Administration, with which all veterans as just so enamored by they love it to death, that it makes sense to put everyone onto a similar system!

Universal healthcare may not cost extra to the economy, but will require significantly raising taxes, and not just on the rich, as there isn’t enough tax revenue from the rich alone to cover it. Unless employers increase salaries to compensate, there will be a lot of the middle class that takes a huge pay cut. It’s unclear to me how you make the transition fair. And I am absolutely adamant that universal healthcare will kill medical innovation worldwide, as the majority of innovation emerges in the United States, due to our for-profit system. I’m willing to pay somewhat more for my health care, to be the world’s center of innovation and progress in medicine!

Regarding jobs, did you read the actual AAF article? They specifically document their assumptions. There are two job related sections in the Green New Deal. The first one that talks about replacing jobs killed by the green energy transition, which the AAF article doesn’t attempt to measure. That could be single digit trillions over ten years, depending on how many of those workers are transitioned to green jobs, and to what extent each green job needs to be subsidized.

The second section “guarantees a job with a family-sustaining wage…to all people of the United States”. Here they use a policy proposal from a liberal think tank in favor of a universal job guarantee, so it’s a friendly source to the idea. It’s not the AAF article author’s assumptions. The different levels of cost depend on how universal that job guarantee is. The low end implies a federal job for a majority of the currently unemployed. The second step up assumes that these guaranteed federal jobs would increase work force participation (a reasonable assumption), adding to the cost. The steps beyond that include the government padding salaries for those already employed. It’s all spelled out in the liberal think tank policy proposal.

Now, I think the problem you run into there is that you’ve basically implemented communism, where every low end job earns the same salary. I don’t see how you are going to convince people to do certain crappy jobs, when the pay is no better than other easier jobs. And I don’t see how companies won’t just offer lower salaries, knowing the government will pick up the slack. It just seems like a recipe for total economic collapse, even if you could “afford” the cost through taxes.

“…The mass purchasing power of the USG will reduces drug and equipment bills radically…”

What planet are you on? It leads to jacked-up prices and corruption when it comes to other goods and services. Vendors love to take advantage of contracts with Uncle Sam. There is less-competition among bidders because of gov’t-required pre-selection, and contracts usually have lots of silly stipulations like involving women or minority-owned business enterprises, “green” disposal or production methods, etc. On top of it all, gov’t oversight is lax compared to that of for-profit companies.

I worked at company in the past that made mobile HVAC systems. We sold a system to Caterpillar for about $300. A very similar system that went into the HUMVEE sold for $8000. About the only difference was one was yellow and one was green.

In your post, you suggested that the health care and job costs are much larger than the other costs (such as green electric grid and transportation), and we should initially ignore the other costs. I’ve already addressed your point about health care and jobs in another post.

In this post, I’ll explain how the AAF article radically underestimates the cost of a green electric grid and transportation. I’m not going to do an exhaustive list (I could, but it would take many pages), just give some interesting examples of large costs that they don’t factor in.

For example, they talk about high speed rail, but what about short distance transportation? Replacing all passenger cars in America with Nissan Leaf electric cars would cost around 7 trillion dollars. Maybe you could find a cheaper car, and maybe you don’t need to replace 100% of the cars, but still any way you look at it, it will definitely be in the trillions. Of course, there’s not enough manufacturing capacity to build that many electric cars, and likely not enough immediately accessible raw materials, so even if you were willing to pay the cost, it’s likely not physically possible to make that many new cars in a decade.

Beyond that, you run into an issue that around half the country rents, and they’ll need some place to plug in their cars. Add another trillion to install charging stations. And if you’re travelling, you might need places to stop and charge — add another trillion or so.

OK, now everyone has an electric car — what happens when everyone plugs in their car at the same time to recharge it? A Chevy Bolt can draw 1400 watts when it is charging, for a total of 8 hours. The average residence draws an average of 1100 watts per hour, so this is a 42% increase in electric power requirements per household. If we are getting rid of fossil fuel heating, and going to all electric heat, that’s another big increase. My conclusion is that it will not be enough to merely replace existing generating capacity with renewables, you’ll also need to add significant new electric power, to cover additional demands on the electric grid. Efficiency gains will help offset some of the requirements, but not enough to avoid spending trillions.

And we haven’t even begun to talk about converting freight trains and trucks to not use fossil fuels. Trillions again!

The AAF article covers building new power plants, and a certain amount of storage, but they optimistically assume 50% nuclear (which the greens will never go for). They don’t cover increasing grid density (to allow better distribution of intermittent power sources across a wider area), or backup generating capacity. I also believe that if you go 100% renewable, you will require some kind of “smart grid” that can throttle end user’s power consumption remotely (for example, disabling charging of electric cars, adjusting thermostats, etc), to handle long stretches of low energy production without resorting to rolling blackouts. All this stuff adds up to trillions more.

A trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon, you’re talking real money! If you think any individual item would cost a lot less, feel free to give math that says otherwise, and we can debate it. I’m not against things like improving energy efficiency (which pays for itself over a certain period of time), but I think going zero carbon will require technical advancement, and simply can’t be done at present. The free market will generate these technical innovations as fossil fuels become more scarce, but attempting to force the transition in a decade in the United States is lunacy. There’s also potential for innovation in atmospheric carbon capture, which could outright solve all our problems without needing to reduce fossil fuel use at all.

As has been said many times here, even if the United States does go zero carbon, it will only reduce global temperatures by 0.1-0.25 degrees (depending on your choice of climate sensitivity), and delay a given warming target by around 8 years, due to China and the developing world picking up the slack. I suppose we’ll have to add another couple hundred trillion to decarbonize the developing world?

The alarmist estimated economic cost of continued warming for the United states is 300-500 billion per year. The AAF article itself estimates around 400 billion a year in permanent yearly costs added from switching to more expensive green energy, and that’s ignoring many other economic costs, or any benefits of the added carbon dioxide (such as increased plant growth). I can’t come up with a cost-benefit analysis that suggests decarbonizing is a net win, even taking the alarmists at face value (and I think their cost estimates are wildly exaggerated). I guess if you think the world will literally become uninhabitable due to warming, it’s worth any cost to stop, but science has a very poor record of predicting the apocalypse so far, and I can’t see how this scare is any different…

$65,000/year? Well, I’m out of the program, then. I don’t have that kind of money and I really don’t know anyone who does, including my neighbors. We’ll just have to mosey along the old-fashioned way and make do with the real world, not this fantasy world.

The things I would like to say would get The Mods on my –s so I won’t. But seriously, someone should point out that we already have a viable passenger rail system for commuters and cross-country travel. Oh, for the days of steam locomotives and the pleasantries of going to the dining car for lunch. Those were the days, my friend, and while Amtrak doesn’t offer as many routes as the old lines used to offer, there is still PLENTY OF PASSENGER RAIL SERVICE ON THE BOOKS.

But let her keep rattling on with her expensive program. How did this manage to go from the original $40.5 trillion to $93++ trillion so quickly? And she still hasn’t offered a solution for getting to Hawaii. I don’t think the US Navy is interested in running passenger transportation in the Pacific.

Not only that but, realistically, you can’t have high speed and regular rail running on the same tracks for obvious reasons. Which means you’d need to build from the ground up not on existing rail lines but on all new rail lines on land that currently isn’t being used for rail – which means purchasing or taking (via eminent domain) that land. In congested cities (where any such rail lines would inevitably need to pass though/connect to) even should you find such land, it would require major construction/destruction work to convert it from it’s current use (tearing down building, digging new tunnels, etc) all the while making sure not to disturb/damage existing infrastructure (power lines, sewer systems, etc) and/or repairing/rebuilding such infrastructure when disturbing/damaging it is unavoidable.

Bottom line a network of highspeed rail just won’t appear overnight (or in a decades time). It’s a logistics nightmare that requires careful planning and lots of resources, particularly in overdeveloped cities.

For instance. Let’s take a look at the leftist Utopia of California:

The California High-Speed Rail Authority was established in 1996 after decades of advocacy for building a high speed rail system in California – Decades just to establish a government department, that’s even before any plans for building a single rail line were started. But let’s put that aside and assume the Feds can put together such a department as soon as the ink is dry on the next democrat’s presidential signature on the Green New Deal Legislation

The initial funding for the California High-Speed Rail system didn’t materialize until the 2010 Federal stimulus bill – 14 years after the department was created. But let’s put that aside and assume the Feds can pass a funding bill immediately (despite how unrealistic that assumption is. have you looked at how well the Feds have been doing on passing funding for anything lately).

Construction contracts weren’t awarded until 2013, and the groundbreaking ceremony for initial construction took place in 2015. Five years after funding began before *any* construction work has started – that’s half the allotted time and that’s for just one very liberal state. Four years later, Gov. Newsom cancelled the project due to delays and cost overruns (IE unsurprisingly it’s costing more than was estimated). 9 years after construction began and it’s no where close to being finished, so far away, in fact, that a leftist governor cancelled the project. and AOC’s New Green Deal thinks we can get a nationwide network completed in 10 years. Not gonna happen.

Unfortunately, unlike the old passenger lines, it does not serve small cities that now have airports, and the lines that used to be passenger lines are either dedicated to freight or have been turned into nature hiking trails. The only other way to get around without a car is OTR bus lines.

It’s disturbing that the person who proposes these things has no idea of the cost, suitability, or how long it will take to set it up. Daydreams are great, aren’t they? I have lots of them. But building the product is a completely different story, and we all know that.

So something could be technologically viable (IE it can feasibly be accomplished with the technology we currently have) but not economically viable (IE it would not be a cost effective thing to do).

So when Sara said “a viable passenger rail system for commuters and cross-country travel.” she was saying it’s something that is possible to do (because, in fact it already exists) not that it was an economically viable (because, as you point out, it isn’t).

What the economists ignore about the use of “carbon free electricity” is that there is no chance it will work, given current technology, or actually be carbon neutral in practice.
There is a better chance that biotechnology will produce flying pigs well before wind and solar are practical on the grid scale.

The one thing in the table that is open to debate is the cost of Universal Health Care. Properly done (aye there’s the rub) it could save America money. link

I, personally, would remove Universal Health Care from the table. Evidence from other jurisdictions is that it costs nowhere near $260,000 per household. All that item does is provides people with ammunition to argue against the whole table.

Not true, in the US drug companies charge whatever they like for medication and are the most expensive in the world. The insurance companies have no interest in negotiating better prices on behalf of their clients, they just pass the charge on. Typically in countries with universal health care the central negotiating power leads to drug cost reductions of a factor of two, e.g. Germany.
Current health care spending in the US is ~$35trillion so the estimate is for no increase over a decade which would be good, although actually total cost will more likely go down.

As usual, Phil. speaks without any knowledge.
US drugs are more expensive because most countries demand that drugs be sold based on the cost of manufacturing alone, leaving the US to pay for the R&D.
If you don’t think that insurance companies don’t negotiate for lower prices then you are even more ignorant than your posts have made you seem.

False. Like any product anyone tries to sell, there is a price point that maximizes profit by selling the most units at a certain margin. When a provider takes advantage of the market, they are hit with racketeering charges.

The US is essentially subsidizing healthcare around the world. We shouldn’t be allowing socialist nations to put a price on US manufactured goods which only causes them to make up for it by increasing the costs in the US. This is exactly what is happening. If you people get your way with socialized medicine and government price fixing, medical R&D will dry up.

I don’t know if it is still in place, but Canada once had a law that required drug companies to sell their product in Canada at the cost of manufacture plus a small percentage. If the drug companies failed to do this, Canada was going to steal the patents and give them to Canadian companies to manufacture.

As other’s have pointed out Phil, you are speaking from ignorance.
1) Countries with universal health care put an artificial cap on the price of drugs (IE price fixing) leaving it to countries like the US to subsidize the cost of R&D . If the US followed suit, you’d have no new drugs as companies could no longer afford the expense of R&D
2) Insurance companies do negotiate better prices on behalf of their clients all the time, it’s in their interest to do so as that’s a selling point for their plans. If you need drug X, you are going to look at the available plans (it’s called competition) and the ones that gets you the best price for drug X will have a better chance at getting your business than the ones that don’t. It’s when there is no competition (such as with Universal Health Care) that it’s not in the interest to negotiate, why put any effort into negotiations when a) you have a captive customer base and b) you can fix prices by legislative fiat and let some other country (like the US) pick up the real costs.

If meeting the massive increase in expenditures demanded by the GND is to be accomplished by the printing of more money, GND critics can add the potential of massive inflation (maybe hyperinflation) to the list of serious problems that the GND will cause. Don’t know if massive increases in borrowing and taxation will do the trick.

Between the two world wars in the last century, Germany’s Weimar Republic was forced to print more money to deal with its economic problems (which the GND will also probably create). The result of this massive infusion of money into its economy was the infamous hyperinflation of the 1920s…

If you ignore history’s lessons, you will doom us all the repeat its mistakes. No one will give a damn what the Earth’s climate is doing if we descend into economic chaos. If only GND supporters understood that.

Rhys Jaggar is serious I think. At first I figured he was being satirical, but evidently not. Free markets have proven to be the most effective way to reduce poverty and create wealth. We need free market solutions to our healthcare.

Do you have any facts to support your assertion that we need free market solutions to solve the US healthcare crisis?

We need to take some action. Based on current trends the US will spend all of our healthcare dollars on treating type 2 diabetes. Type 2 Diabetes used to be only an late adult disease, it is now due to diet ignorance an epidemic of young people.

The Democrats should go after US health care. The US spends almost twice as much per person on ‘health care’ with worst outcomes.

P.S. Private industry can run the hospitals and clinics under single payer, if that is cheaper or more effective. The first step is getting rid of HMOs and taking immediate action to reduce the US sugar consumption.

(See new Canadian food guide which recommends people drink water rather than sugar pop or fruit juice which mostly sugar. OK based on research to eat whole fruit, just not fruit juice. Canadian food guide was developed based on science to reduce Canadian health care costs. Brits are following the same science based plan.)

“In 2016, the U.S. spent 17.8 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on healthcare. Other countries’ spending ranged from a low of 9.6 percent of GDP in Australia to a high of 12.4 percent of GDP in Switzerland.”

Instead, health spending may be higher in the U.S. because prices are steeper for drugs, medical devices, physician and nurse salaries and administrative costs to process medical claims, researchers report in JAMA.

“There’s no doubt that administrative complexity and higher drug prices both matter – as do higher prices for pretty much everything in U.S. healthcare,” said lead study author Irene Papanicolas of the London School of Economics and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.
“These inefficiencies are likely the product of a number of factors including a reliance on fee-for-service reimbursement, the administrative complexity of the U.S. health care system and the lack of price transparency across the system,” Papanicolas said by email.

Your error comes from your erroneous belief that we have free market health care in the US.

Regardless, when you compare like to like, US health care costs are well below that of the rest of the world.
Like to like means you need to account for differences in the population. You also have to adjust for different definitions used by various health care systems.

US drug prices are steeper because we pay to develop the drugs that the rest of the world free loads off of.

Those who know nothing about health care, always bring up infant mortality.
Did you know that in Germany, any baby that dies in the first 24 hours after birth is considered a still born, and doesn’t count against the infant mortality numbers?
Did you know that in France, any baby that weighs under a certain amount and then dies, is considered a miscarriage and doesn’t count against the infant mortality numbers.
There are other differences, if you care to learn. If your only goal is to defend socialized medicine, then I will expect that you will keep repeating these same bogus statistics.

As to life expectancy, that number is drug down by large numbers of urban youths shooting each other.
When you compare individual populations in the US to comparable populations in other countries, the US does better.

Yeah, I can see it now. Doctors work for bartender wages while trying to pay off $200,000 in student loan, not. There will be tons of foreign doctors, only half of whom speak English. Life prolonging treatment will disappear. Only treatments that cure will be allowed so that money will be best spent. If a treatment only prolongs your life by less than 5 years, it won’t pass the cost/benefit analyses. Same with end of life care. Why spend that money when you’re going to die anyway?

If the coal fired power plants use the ZECCOM™¹ (Zero Emissions Coal Combustion) Process and the Natural gas fired power plants us the ZENGCOM™¹ (Zero Emissions Natural Gas Combustion) Process, there wiol be no need for renewable energy of a green grid and it will keep you frompaying for new electricity generation that will be about 3 times as expensive as what you had. and the cost of these processes is a new combustor at a lower cost than the one it replaces and a new flue gas cooler that is cheaper than the one it replaces.

And it will still produce just as much CO2 as the old combustor did. But that CO2 will be magically squirreled away in an “underground sequestration area”, apparently without any cost or other consequences.

Tennessee was an early adopter of expanded medicare. The program is called TennCare. Within a decade program cost were threatening to blowup the state budget. After fierce media and democrat resistance to cutting costs or coverage the Republican Governor proposed a state income tax. We do not have one. He was sent packing by his own party. His replacement was a Democrat with a background in managing healthcare costs. He slashed the rolls with no state income tax.

I am continually amazed that the focus is on money and not the viability of replacement energy. There is no replacement for fossil fuels currently, none. What the green new deal is really saying to everyone is, Get Back in Your Cave!

Perhaps the focus is on money because everyone working for their living understands from personal experience the need to match expenses to income. However, many do not have experience or info to evaluate viability of a renewable energy grid.

It will not cost this much, because there isn’t this much to be gotten from the nation–especially not its savings. And forget about simply taking wealth. The nation’s wealth that is parked in collectables, multi-million dollar properties, and current energy infrastructure, will, via the New Green Deal, die there.

I’m all in, but they’re gonna have to take a check. Lets face it, she spent a lot of time behind a bar listening to all of the problems of her patrons . I’m sure like any good bartender she wrote down all the good ideas on a bar napkin and saved them for just this moment. With her experience, what could go wrong. Saving the world is noble work and she should be applauded for her efforts. What’s more, if this works, all we have to do is elect all of our representatives and senators from the vast pool of bartenders across the country. They truly have their thumbs on the pulse of America.

AOC got these ideas at Boston College, not while she was bartending. Bartending was just a diversion from her true role as one of the Anointed. It was a sad time when she actually had to perform a service for others to make ends meet. Now she has ascended into her true role as a socialist leader, where she will practice giving away other people’s money to everyone, especially herself. No longer will she be burdened with the need to contribute something positive to society. Those demeaning times are now over.

I think her next job in 2 years will be as an activist. I don’t think she’s going to last in Congress. She’s very popular amongst her kind on social media, but IMO she’s making enemies fast in the DNC, and politically that’s where the real power lies. I don’t see how she survives the 25,000-job-loss albatross that is now hung around her neck.

It is going to cost much more than this estimate. Let us consider how much it will cost just to lose the sports industry because they will not be able to sustain on battery power. Hell, the reduction in beer sales alone will cost the government billions in tax dollars. What about all those supporting businesses for sports? Gone along with jobs and tax dollars. You have to realize the domino effect when a major industry drastically reduces or goes completely out.

It will not cost this much because not enough of the American people are quite stupid enough to go for this drivel. I hope. If this stuff ever does get voted in it will cost a lot more than the article claims due to millions of Americans like me moving out of the country. Thus the cost per person would double…

Actually the headline writer wrote that “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past”. The scientist said that “snowfall would become a rare and exciting event” and that “Children aren’t going to know what snow is” and he also said that “Heavy snow will return occasionally” and that when it does “We’re really going to get caught out, snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time”.
Of course another fact you omit to mention was that this was specifically referring to southern England.

Eliminating emissions from the power supply using motensalt Small Modular Reactors would cots roughly
$800 billion. As follows – the U.S.requires 460 Gigawatts of capacity.We already have 92 GWs of nuclear and 30 GW of hydro. That leaves 338 GWs from molten salt reactors. 500 MW reactors cost roughly $1.25 billion each.
We will require 1590 reactors, total cost roughly $800 billion. Costs of power will decrease, as molten salt reactors can produce power with a levelized cost of 4 cents per kWhr. Reactors wil pay for themselves over their extended lifespans of 60 plus years.

But you need to get it done in 10 years. That might up the cost to … what?
$812 billion or 40 trillion?

But if you ask Ocasio she will, based on her fantastic education, tell you about the economy of scale … we’ll get it done for less than 600 billion. And with the peripheral green jobs we’ll make a profit.

The cost , in money , is the least of the problems with this GND . What you are risking with the deal , especially in the extreme form demanded by the children of the most liberal communities is the homogeneity of the US itself .
By first reducing and then banning the use of fossil fuels you are denying yourself the asset that provides most of the energy for current lifestyles, the money that will now have to be withdrawn to compensate and the elimination of material that provides for much of modern life from food to clothing . Just buy from India and China people say . Buy with what ? For rich politicians ,and the well healed academics and financiers funding this deal it may not be a problem but they are in a minority. India and China will not hand out food and clothing , steel and rubber , etc to 300million people for nothing , forever. They will want recompense , but fortunately (fortunately?) you have something they need – space. Sell territory , a sort of Louisiana purchase or Alaska purchase in reverse . But then you risk having large areas where Washington’s writ no longer runs.
But that is only half the story , because that would be the legitimate barter market. Judging from the experience of Britain during rationing in 40s and 50s there will be a black market and the crime associated with it. Prohibition , where just one item was banned was surely a warning of what could ensue . And who will run the black market ? Not nice people but the Mafia and cartel types who have successfully run drug smuggling in the US for the last 70 years . Another cause for the social and political disintegration of the formerly United States. And for what gain in the end?

The US Adjusted Gross Income in 2016 was $10.2 Trillion. That was the aggregate income of all individuals as reported to the US.
From 1945 to 2000 that number grew from $120 Billion to $6.4 Trillion. The real growth was ~ 3% annually. From 2000 to 2016 the real growth was about 1%. Currently the entitlement apparatus is growing faster than the income to pay for it.

Let’s assume by 2020 the AGI is $11.5 Trillion. By then the Federal, State and Local expenditures could be $7 Trillion. Adding another $9.3 Trillion per year on the backs of taxpayers should be a trick.

Apparently they are planning on making many trade offs and giving up much of the $5 Trillion spent to be spent on Social Programs. And then increasing taxes on nonexistent incomes, as well.

For those favoring taxing the 16,000 making over $10 Million annually, keep in mind doubling their taxes only generates $120 Billion.

Should be quite a show. For those commenters above who think it’s doable or a good idea, get your head out of your a..!

Why only households have to pay? How about corporate citizens like Amazon and Netflix who pay no tax on billions in profits

Besides, we dont pay for 1 trillion a year in military spending, we just borrow it.

Heres an idea, instead of taxes and borrowing to pay, how about printing greenbacks using the natural resources of the country as assets to back the currency. Its about time The Fed Reserve had some competition for money creation who uses toxic and worthless MBS , and USTS to back their notes. As Henry Ford once said, if a country can print treasuries to sell for cash they can print the cash.

Why only households have to pay? How about corporate citizens like Amazon and Netflix who pay no tax on billions in profits

Corporations don’t pay taxes, they just collect them. The taxes corporations “pay” get added to the cost of the product/service they are selling. The end user ultimately pays the hidden tax. Politicians like this arrangement as it allows them to demonize the “greedy corporations” while at the same time picking the consumers pocket.

Heres an idea, instead of taxes and borrowing to pay, how about printing greenbacks using the natural resources of the country as assets to back the currency.

The Weimer republic (among many other regimes throughout history) tried that idea. When you print money at the amount needed for the Green New Deal, the result will be the same as all those other failed attempts at printing money as a way out of government’s revenue problems: hyper-inflation

The Progressive wing of the Democrat party needs to topple the old leadership immediately! BAU is not going to bring equity to the people. Feed the starving masses. Achieve healthcare as a human right. Keep up the good work AOC. Yes you can. Yes you can.

… “the Green New Deal would bankrupt the nation,” Wyoming GOP Sen. John Barrasso said in a statement …
==================================================
He is certainly right about that but then forfeits the argument by suggesting other means to reduce emissions instead of dealing with the climate change™ hobgoblin head-on like Trump.
Once you cede to the ‘fossil fuels -> CO2 -> climate change -> bad (going to kill us)’ narrative you’ve lost.

It was Reagan’s tax cuts, Gingrich’s holding the line on spending plus the tech bubble that resulted in Clinton’s zero deficit. (Of course it wasn’t actually zero because it was still being papered over by Social Security surplus’s. Something that no longer exists.)

Trump’s deficits are small compared to Obama’s, and that’s despite the fact that we have more debt at higher interest rates than Obama’s time in office.

Clinton did not have $0 debt. He left office with trillions in debt. (Obama added as much debt as all the presidents from Washington to Bush combined). What Clinton did have happen on his watch however, was a chimera of a “balanced budget” for one year (the debt still rose by $281 billion that year). I say Chimera, because while Clinton managed to pay down the “public debt” (making it look like he was reducing the debt/had no deficit) he did so by borrowing far more money in the form of intra-governmental holdings, selling the debt to agencies that held the securities as assets (mostly Social Security). As well, short-term governmental securities were replaced longer term debt maturing on someone else’s watch.

You personally want economic ruin, a short-brutal existence all for no real affect on the environment for your 2 grandchildren instead of the alternative of economic prosperity and the modern conveniences that come with cheap energy. I hope you are not planning on having your grandchildren look after you in your old age because 1) you and they aren’t likely to live that long in the world you prefer and 2) should you and they manage to survive that long, they’d be wise to want nothing to do with someone who would wish such misery on them.

It means nothing to the 50% of households not paying taxes anyway, so it’s really $130,000 for each PRODUCTIVE household out there. So, how fast will the productive folks move from the Productive Class over the Welfare Class? Faster than you can say Communism.

Has anyone even read that study? They assume that 50% of the new low carbon capacity is going to be nuclear in states that have nuclear power, while the greens and AOC obviously want a ban on nuclear power. Then they don’t assume any new transmission costs, while the new wind and solar will require a huge amount of new power lines. And finally, they assume just 4 hours of storage on the grid, which is not even remotely enough to provide any semblance of reliability in a grid that’s mostly intermittent generation with some inflexible nuclear and no gas or diesel, so their modeled grid will be in near permanent blackout due to wind and sun not showing up when required. The total costs should be much much higher than meager 5 trillion.

There is only one problem with that analysis. It assumes the economy would continue and the people would have enough money to pay for it. When in reality, the economy would collapse. The inevitable fate of a socialist economy.

The only thing with unlimited supply is human stupidity. In Australia, our greenie types and a Labor shadow front bencher approve the end of the entire coal industry. Without coal, we lose around half our export income. Considering we gave away our manufacturing to China, how are we going to pay for our cheap rubbishy imports? Without the export income, the economy totally collapses. Household incomes will collapse, tax receipts will plummet (how can you tax someone with almost no income), unemployment will skyrocket and what is left of our industries will become totally uncompetitive. It will become a race for who can find the best cave.
Likewise, the Green Deal is total lunacy, driven by Utopian visions that are just whimsy that just do not stack up to even rudimentary analysis. With the delusional left refusing to enter in to debate (how bigoted) , just insisting it must be right, no scrutiny permitted, if ever a Democratic President is elected (or fraudulently elected) they will pass this suicidal rubbish immediately.
What is most disturbing is that any human with a brain actually would allow such insanity to become eco fascist law.

If AOC says American families can afford her plan it must be true, the woman is a financial genius.
With a salary of $158k she can afford a different brand new $600 coat every time she appears in public.

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